Small choices: Blood Craze/Commanding Presence
Talents March 23rd, 2007Johnny is an Arms/Fury warrior, he has got up to Second Wind in arms and is now picking fury talents to get deathwish and improved Intercept. Johnny got 10 points in fury and now has 5 points to spend before he can pick Enrage, so he put a point into piercing howl instantly as it’s wtfpwn and start thinking what to choose: 3/3 Blood Craze and 1/5 Commanding, or 4/5 Commanding. Johnny’s little brain tells him that 20% increase in his shouts is woohoo and 3% self heal after a crit, over 6 seconds, that doesn’t even stack and gets reset when you get crit often is meh. Is Johnny right, or is he another mentally handicapped kid? Let’s take a look.
Commanding shout gives 1080 hp untalented, Battle shout rank 8 gives 305 attack power untalented. Now we are looking at 3 points increase in the talent, as the difference is to have 1 point in it, or to have 4 points in it. 3 points are 15%, so going 4/5 Commanding Presence gives Johnny 46 attack power or 162 hp advantage over 3/3 Blood Craze guy. I mean - HOLY SHIT! 162HP! THAT’S LIKE ALMOST MY ONE DEEP WOUNDS TICK! Pure awesomeness.
Ok, so what do you gain for loosing those 162hp? Let’s take a look at Johnny’s health bar, every warrior with half of a brain should stand on, at very least, 10k HP with commanding shout alone. That means Johnny would regenerate 300hp with just one proc of Blood Craze. Let me repeat it in case you missed the point - it’s just one proc. How often are you getting critted in pvp? Ever heard of “perma enrage”? Blood Craze is not that far behind it. In many fights you will see it ticking constantly, giving you 1% hp every 2 seconds (occasionally stacked with Second Wind giving you total 3% hp every 2 seconds). The longer the fight is and the more you get crit, the better Blood Craze is.
So where is the hack? There are two. First - the obvious one - blood craze works only on yourself while commanding presence is whole party. Second - resilience is bugged now, and if you have Blood Craze and Enrage, whenever a crit will be reduced to a hit due to resilience, you will get either Enrage or Blood Craze, but not both of them! Take your pick.
Terhix
March 23rd, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Just the other day, I went through each of my talents to evaluate their actual effectiveness. The above was my original thought process. I think that the above view (my former view) is pretty “novice” and does not take into account the realities of the arena:
1. Warriors are not generally a dps target until the battle is already decided. When Johnny is not the DPS target, Blood Craze provides 0 benefit to him and is a waste of three talent points with respect to that encounter.
2. Commanding Presence is situational in degree, but absolute in benefit. If a team needs dps, it provides a bonus to all AP based DPS in the group. If a team needs more HP, it provides a gross of 800 more hp (admittedly only 160 of which is directed at the player that needs it the most, the dps target).
Commanding Presence is, for most warriors, probably a more efficient use of talent points. No difference than Warlocks stacking HP gear instead of damage. You have to plan for the realities of the arena.
March 23rd, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Without going into detail….blood craze is trash….
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:44 pm
It’s very unlikely u won’t get crit a single time even if you are not targeted, be it whirlwind, blast wave or heck, even frost nova. A single crit provides double the benefit of 3 points in commanding, and it scales with gear too. The difference is it works only on yourself. 162 hp is crap, it’s like what, 1.5% more hp for 3 talent points? It’s much more likely blood craze is going to give you an edge, then commanding shout will give your team an edge, I doubt anyone but warriors even notice the difference in their hp when they are buffed by warriors with 1 point into commanding and when they are buffed by warriors with 4 points into it.
The discussion if warriors are or are not being targeted first is another story.
March 25th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Arenas are also only 1 aspect of the game.
In battlegrounds blood craze is pretty nice, as it is for soloing/farming/grinding. Also I find myself targeted relatively often in 2v2 arenas (i run with a paladin).
The net benefit of either talent is pretty small, but blood craze is significantly better imo.